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Avarchillion June 21st, 2011 07:51 PM

MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
2 Attachment(s)
Now updated!

---------------------
Well, after playing Dominions 3 for a time, I turned, as most people do, to the great homemade Usermods. After a time of playing these mods, I found something missing. A good insane nation and a good Vampire nation. So, well, I combined them.
As a fan of the WhiteWolf Vamprie: Dark Ages and Vampire: The Masquerade Roleplaying Wolrds, I immediately thought of the insane Vampire Clan "The Malkavians".
So I checked some of my books for some background information on the Malkavians, created some 2D sprites (most modified out of others created used in other mods), learnt how to make a mod for Dominions 3 and well scripted it together.
I think it turned out rather well. :)

Here the "official" description:
"If you find yourself drowning in madness -- DIVE!
This is the House of Malkav, the broken Mirror, the shattered Dream. Surrender your sanity and bow to the voices from Faerieland."
"--Most Kindred cling to the familiar shores of sanity like drowning men. Though they know a constant, low-level madness from their slavery to the bloodlust, most Kindred usually resist it and fight off all other derangements. Some are eaten alive from within by the Beast; most grip their sanity with a miser's clutch.
But some Kindred plunge in where the strongest elders fear to go, giving full vent to their demon desires and mad caprices. Some do it by choice, but the rest do it because they are forced to. The curse of Malkav has stolen their choice in the matter, and they can either agree to dive into madness, or be dragged under the murky waters by the chains of insanity.--

The House of Malkav is a nation ruled by Vampires. Through the curse of Malkav, the Antediluvian who sired the first Malkavian, all Vampires who belong to the House of Malkav are insane. Their minds are shattered even though they have gained frightful power in madness.
"
"Race: Thralls, Familiars, Ghouls and low level Malkavians. Military: strong but expensive infantry + some cheap Thralls, powerful yet insane Vamipres, strong summoning abillities . Magic: strong, only astral, blood and death magic. Priests: Strong but insane. Play with high turmoil/luck scale and 'the Elder' or the 'ninja wannabe' as pretender god."

here a list of all the included units:

units:
2540 thrall
2541 familiarsword
2542 familiarcrossbow
2543 familiarlance
2544 ghoul guardian
2545 ghoulassassin
2546 fledgeling
2547 neonate
2548 wereform
2549 Tzimisce Broodmother
2550 tzimisce Vozhd
2551 Tzimisce Szlachta
2552 lupin
2553 Faeriesprite
2554 Zombu
2555 Wraith
2556 War Ghoul

commanders:
2580 crazed monster
2560 mad prophet
2561 mesmeric manipulator
2562 thefreak
2563 waking dreamer
2564 the awakened
2565 ravinglunatic
2566 ghoulsheriff
2567 Malkavian Elder
2568 big bad lupin
2569 big faerie

heroes:
2572 dionysian
2574 rasputin
2575 vasantasena
2576 crazy jane
2577 malk content

god:
2573 the elder
2582 the ninja wannabe

So far so good, I hope you like playing this mod as much as I do. Feel free to commend on my work, for I am still open to suggestions.

god bless,
avarchillion

PS: I, of course, used the #shatteredsoul tag to simulate insanity in my vampires. :)
PPS: I forgot to mention, that this mod is fully playable.
PPPS: Also important: I don't think this mod is compatible with other mods.
PPPPS: Please forgive me my, sometimes bad english. I am German and therefore prone to misspell or misuse grammar now and then.

UPDATE: I have updated my mod and put the new version (1.4 into this post. So please download the 1.4 version (it should be a lot more balanced).

Avarchillion June 25th, 2011 06:54 AM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
2 Attachment(s)
Here an updated version (now 1.2) of my mod, with an additional pretender god "the Ninja-Wannabe" and a new spell to summon 10 Faeriesprites.
Also some balancing.

Have fun. :)

Deathjester June 26th, 2011 08:50 AM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
Welcome to the community. This is your first post? Wow, that is a good way to start.

Ambitious first mod with lots of content. I will try it out when I have the time to. Good job just posting a complete mod nation!

Avarchillion June 26th, 2011 04:07 PM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
Thank you!
I made most of this mod about a year ago. Took me about one week of coding, balancing and of course pixel painting, but I just loved doing it.
I love being creative in that kind way.

Of course balancing still needs some work. The Vampires are extremly strong, but I hope I have countered that via the shatteredsoul feat.
At first I wanted to give them the #insane feat (but this was not possible, because it is hard-coded) so I had to switch to the shatteredsoul wich works suprisingly well with the nature of a Malkavian ("Open Tomb", "Mutter", "Mourn the Dead" ....).

Well, I´m just glad I found a game where I had the chance to put some of the WhiteWolf Vampire stuff into.
Maybe in future I will try to create some other Vampire-Clans as new nations Mods.

avarchillion

Deathjester June 28th, 2011 04:13 AM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
You might want to post this mod over at the "other" forum:

http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/

There seems to be more responses to mods there and there are also several very experienced modders there that might give you good feedback/advice/tips.

Avarchillion June 28th, 2011 08:48 AM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
1 Attachment(s)
Thanks, I´m going to take a look at that website. :)

well, after playing my mod again, I realized that there still were some balancing issues. So I re-balanced some stuff and there release the new version 1.2.2.

There is no new content included, but a lot of re-balancing happened:
- tweaked the heroes a bit
- tweaked the blood drink weapon of the vampires.
- reset some shatteredsoul stats
- tweaked the regeneration abillity

well, let me know what you think of the changes.

god bless,
avarchillion

Avarchillion July 13th, 2011 06:22 PM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
1 Attachment(s)
I have been sick today and therefore had the time to check into my mod again.
Well, that let to some bigger changes in the mod and therefore I proudly present "The House of Malkav" 1.3.
I added some new spells to summon all the vampires you could normally recruit. I did that, because the vampire nation is rather destructable to its own population and therefore will have falling income over time. As the vampires are expansive at a certain point in time you could not recruit army anymore. So well, now you also can summon them.

avarchillion

Renojustin December 15th, 2011 01:28 AM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
1.2.2:

This is an outstandingly fun mod nation. One of my very most favorite, and I have played MANY.

Very tough at first with the pretender and scales it is meant to be played with... (playing against Mushroom Kingdom on Impossible Aggressive + 7 other nations on Mighty Random) but there are a few issues.

1) The Elder cannot summon Big, Dumb, and Ugly. The blood slaves are used but no War Ghoul appears.

2) Waking Dreamers are UBER POWERFUL for their cost and /gemsummon, not to mention their research value, even with 30 Shattered Soul.

3) Maiandros is probably the most powerful being I have ever seen. I was lucky to get him and set him on the Koopa Kingdom early; he assassinated their Titan god several times while bringing their capitol to 100+ unrest. Then I used him as a raider, didn't even need any spells or items, or Immortality, he would frequently annihilate entire provinces of 150-250+ armies.

3) Mad Prophets are likewise overpowered with +4 Blood Vengeance. You can send them against most armies of enormous size and be confident they have a great chance of winning. Also, they cannot Preach, was that intended?

4) I find myself not recruiting anything but Waking Dreamers, Freaks, and Mad Prophets... they are so very powerful that nothing else much matters. Freaks though are much better balanced: their lack of head armor is a real equalizer.

I love, LOVE playing this very overpowered nation. The sprites are very well done, the descriptions are SUPERB (there are some few typos in the nation description and elsewhere), just the prices for immortal vampire commanders (which are thematically recruitable everywhere) are quite a bit low and two or three are extremely overpowerful in every scenario.

I did not find the crossbowmen at 15g/10r and 1 attack per round to be THAT gamebreaking. In fact, they were far more imminently killable than the vampires and I found to be eventually rather a waste of your extremely limited gold.

Also, the Thrall Cavalry does not have any weapon even though their graphic shows them to carry spears or lances.

Renojustin December 15th, 2011 10:57 PM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
Ok I finished my game. In the last post, Maiandros = Malk Content. He ended up with 987 kills and kept pretty much all of Mighty Mictlan at bay until he finally died. By then I had researched Darkness and had Vampire Lords flying around with Skeleton Staves casting it. The Lupin Mamas were much too powerful to stop with their ally summon. I didn't even really need the Darkness.

If I were to play again, I would definitely take a major drain scale, either 2 or 3 points, and try for Order. I would also go with Sloth 3. Then I would go straight for Lupin Mamas, via Waking Dreamers and use ONLY Mad Prophets for expansion. A big Earth Bless would more or less make this nation almost totally unstoppable.

UNITS:

Thralls are fine, and thematic with very high morale, and low stats otherwise. They autosummon which is ok, especially since I didn't seem to get them except when really needed. It was fun to watch them die in droves as they raced forward to PD against enemies.

Familiar Lanceriders are only using their Fist. I see they have a Glaive or something in the graphic... but still, ugh I hate overpriced cavalry. And that's being redundant: it seems to me that almost all cavalry is overpriced.

The Familiar Crossbowmen surely need balancing. At 15g/10r, they have 12 precision with a 15 AP attack once per round at 40 range. Come on. This is pretty much the only unit I ever bought.

Ghoul Assassins I would not purchase as I got 6 times the firepower with a like amount of Familiar Crossbowmen.

The Familiar Swordsmen are overpriced as well, even with a good Patrol bonus.

The fledgling Malkavians I would never buy for 80gp, they are much too fragile and this nation has so little gold up to midgame. Many times I would receive 5 random events, and all were bad: you cannot count on them for gold.

I only used about 4-5 of the pretty decent Neonate Malkavians throughout the game. Love the Finglonger.

Ghoul Guardians for PD are the MAN. At 55 gold I would not purchase them for my armies, they can easily come down in price to 30/40 but as PD they deflected most attacks leveled at my nation. No routing at 30 morale, 18 armor piercing attack (not magical? Hardly any of the weapons in this mod are, if any... I'm not sure if this was intended), with a 4 length weapon and 14 Attack. Always get 20 PD in any province you care at all about, because then the combination of these and Mad Prophets make that an extremely difficult province to take. Really the PD is extremely deadly for the price. Evocation mages did tend to make short work of it though and it would be slightly more balanced in MP.

HEROES:

The Malk Content is absolutely crazy. Probably the most powerful being I've ever seen in Dominions 3. Looked and acted like a Great Horror, with possibly stronger abilities.

I got Rasputin showing up at my capitol: he had 6 Death, 8 Blood. Dear lord. At 50 Shattered Soul he actually had a streak of about 10 rounds in a row rampaging through my capitol... so he may be somewhat balanced, weird to say. He did come in handy to summon Wraith Lords later on... I got him near endgame.

COMMANDERS:

One Mad Prophet is usually enough to destroy almost any province of independents or SP enemy nation, with their ridiculous Blood Vengeance +4. If you are looking into balancing, I would not give them more than +2, and probably lower their Holy to 3.

Mesmeric Manipulators are fun, I got one with Unequaled Obesity for much of the early game lol. Still, their 30 Shattered Soul means you have to use them extremely sparingly for their only unique function, which is Seduction/Assassination. Eventually she went haywire while in an enemy land and the PD killed her. Their 30 Magic Resistance comes in great handy for this job, they are awesome prophet killers. I can see myself using them in MP.

The Freaks I would only use later on for Blood Hunting, as their 20 Shattered Soul is less than any of the others, plus their relative cheapness of 200g is encouraging.

The other 3 commanders, The Awakend (is this meant to be spelled this way?), the Crazed Monster, and the Raving Lunatic are pretty much throwaways... I never hired one and there is no reason I can think of that I would want to. (Unless a Scythe has an area effect attack?) Still. Maybe some alternate magical paths would be nice here.

Vohzd and Broodmothers... seem pretty much in line. Though at 30 and 60 bloodslaves, I'd just rather have Vampire Lords for 77 slaves. They totally have their use as tramplers though. The Swallow Whole ability... how is that supposed to work for Tramplers? It deals 2x to units smaller than it, but don't they just Trample those?

SUMMONS:

Wraiths are very powerful. The Shivering Shiver gives you 4-5 of them for a mere 10 death gems, and they are Ethereal and Immortal with high Attack and 2x armor negating, paralyzing attacks. Still you have 0 commanders that can actually summon them without boosters. Kind of weird not having any vampires with over 2 Death. I did not find Cappadocians anywhere.

War Ghouls look great. Their powers seem about in line with other similar cost units. Throwing Body Ethereal on almost any mid-to-higher summon like this makes it a death machine.

Big Bad Lupins are sooo powerful, WAY too powerful. For 20 astral gems at Conjuration 7 they can Summon Allies to get a Lupin. Lupins are how I won the game... they are extraordinarily powerful. Huge amounts of hps, huge ATK value, 3 attacks, 20 strength. Great protection, especially when berserking, large amounts of regneration, and even indy commanders can use them. Recuperation and Dark Power are just icing on the cake. Either the Lupin Mamas or the Lupins themselves need definite balancing. Trick Lupines summon at 15 astral for 4 units seems balanced. Lupin Mamas for 20 astral gems is easily the biggest giveaway in the mod. They should cost at least double, and that is being pretty generous.

Vampire Elders at 4 astral/4 blood are almost laughable for 30 blood slaves. They cost 5 blood to get to, so good luck with that. Disappointing. They are totally useless as anything except Call Horror batteries, compared to the other commanders in this nation. That is to say, they are practically balanced.

Zombus are right in line with their cost and power level. The only thing useful about them is that they cause Fear which is kind of thematic with the rest of the nation and has good synergy. Though I didn't use them, I can see how they may occasionally be useful.

Fairy Beings at 6 astral and 6 flying movement are nice. But the fairies they autosummon do not seem to work... they always kill themselves with fairy dust and I don't think the Touch of Madness works. I set them to attack archers and they pretty much only ever killed themselves.

The Sczhlata were fine at about 1 blood slave each.

CONCLUSION:

This nation is much too powerful for MP. It was, however, extraordinarily fun to play in just about maxed out SP. The descriptions were stupendous, but I don't know if you took those out of the books or if you made them yourself. If you did write those just for this mod, my god. The various armors and weapons were often hilarious, and always cool.

This mod is HUGE. And the Malkavians play very differently than most any other mod nation I've tried. Sometimes the Shattered Soul gets in the way, but Immortal, Regenerating, Fearing, Life Draining, Multiple Attack units more than makes up for it. Very, very fun and extremely well done module, with glaring balance issues. Thank you for all the work that went in to this!!! Hope you find this useful and interesting.

Renojustin December 15th, 2011 11:07 PM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
I wonder if you could take the White Wolf concept of vampire Generation and put it into your next mod: For commanders you could recruit different archetype 6th Generation vampires which could then Summon Ally different lines of 7th Generation vampires which could then Summon Ally 8th Generation vampires...etc. This could be balanced by having more and more population and/or gold consumption as they increase in strength.

Perhaps at 9 Blood you could Ritual Summon one of three or four Antediluvians, a 3rd Generation vampire, the direct descendant of Malkav. Maybe they could eat other vampires, even commanders as fuel?

Anyway, just a thought I had. Thanks again!

Renojustin December 16th, 2011 02:04 AM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
Forgot one:

Waking Dreamers. Oh my god. 2 gemsummons per turn, and the 3 most powerful magic paths. 21 base research... they are what powers this nation. If they were priced fairly, they'd be over 1000gp.

Avarchillion January 5th, 2012 07:33 PM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
Thank you for your healthy critic. :-)

Quote:

1) The Elder cannot summon Big, Dumb, and Ugly. The blood slaves are used but no War Ghoul appears.
puh, did you download the newest version of the mod? i never had a problem with the war ghoul summoning. just tried it and it worked. could be a compatibillity issue. i do not think that this mod is compatible with any other mods.

Quote:

2) Waking Dreamers are UBER POWERFUL for their cost and /gemsummon, not to mention their research value, even with 30 Shattered Soul.
i tried a lot of differend configurations with these commanders and i thought that their high unpredictabillity would make up for their powers. it normaly turns out like this: you have 10 waking dreamers and all should be researching BUT 3 of them destroy your temple (so you can not hire other commanders), 2 are muttering, 1 is attending a funeral and anotherone is happily pillaging your hometown.
maybe i could increase their shattered soul stat?

Quote:

3) Maiandros is probably the most powerful being I have ever seen. I was lucky to get him and set him on the Koopa Kingdom early; he assassinated their Titan god several times while bringing their capitol to 100+ unrest. Then I used him as a raider, didn't even need any spells or items, or Immortality, he would frequently annihilate entire provinces of 150-250+ armies.
well, sry for that. i have tought about tweaking him, but i liked the idea of some kind of insane god, that is nearly uncontolable and is a menace as much to you as to anyone else. if you read the malkavian book you start seeing him as a kind of superpower in himself.

Quote:

3) Mad Prophets are likewise overpowered with +4 Blood Vengeance. You can send them against most armies of enormous size and be confident they have a great chance of winning. Also, they cannot Preach, was that intended?
you are right there. this is something i was about to lower. i wanted them to be more like insane conspiray guys (there are real conspirays out there, but also a lot of insane guys) that preach some dribble and never work together. so i wanted them to be more of a heretic then a preacher.

Quote:

4) I find myself not recruiting anything but Waking Dreamers, Freaks, and Mad Prophets... they are so very powerful that nothing else much matters. Freaks though are much better balanced: their lack of head armor is a real equalizer.
again, i will try to tweak them a bit so it´s more balanced.

Quote:

The sprites are very well done, the descriptions are SUPERB (there are some few typos in the nation description and elsewhere), just the prices for immortal vampire commanders (which are thematically recruitable everywhere) are quite a bit low and two or three are extremely overpowerful in every scenario.
thank you again! the commanders and heroes description come more or less from the malkavian book. anything else i made up on my own. :-) It was rather fun doing it. :-)
i am good at that kind of thing.

Quote:

I did not find the crossbowmen at 15g/10r and 1 attack per round to be THAT gamebreaking. In fact, they were far more imminently killable than the vampires and I found to be eventually rather a waste of your extremely limited gold.
you don´t recruit them for a real battle. you recruit them for guard duty. they are very good at patrolling your vampire ravaged provinces and are rather cheap. ;-)

also the riders have weapons, i checked that. they have a "riders lance".

so, thanks for the critisism and try version 1.2.3.

i hope i will have a new and more balanced version uploaded soon.

by the way, i am german, so please show me where my spelling errors are.

avarchillion

Avarchillion January 5th, 2012 08:03 PM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
Quote:

Ghoul Assassins I would not purchase as I got 6 times the firepower with a like amount of Familiar Crossbowmen.
well, the assassins have a nice little poison crossbow that shoots bolts that erupt into a poison cloud on impact. this cloud hits up to two enemies and is rather tough to deal with. i thought that they were somewhat imbalanced.

Quote:

The fledgling Malkavians I would never buy for 80gp, they are much too fragile and this nation has so little gold up to midgame. Many times I would receive 5 random events, and all were bad: you cannot count on them for gold.
hm, good point. i do not want to make them stronger, so should i lower their price?

Quote:

I only used about 4-5 of the pretty decent Neonate Malkavians throughout the game. Love the Finglonger.
well, as a futurama fan i just could not resist the finglonger. :-D

Quote:

Ghoul Guardians for PD are the MAN. At 55 gold I would not purchase them for my armies, they can easily come down in price to 30/40 but as PD they deflected most attacks leveled at my nation. No routing at 30 morale, 18 armor piercing attack (not magical? Hardly any of the weapons in this mod are, if any... I'm not sure if this was intended), with a 4 length weapon and 14 Attack. Always get 20 PD in any province you care at all about, because then the combination of these and Mad Prophets make that an extremely difficult province to take. Really the PD is extremely deadly for the price. Evocation mages did tend to make short work of it though and it would be slightly more balanced in MP.
well, sry that´s because i always hate it if my provinces get overrun because i am fighting somewhere else. i just looooove good defence. that´s why i balanced the ghoul guardians to do exactly that: guard.
i tried a lot of differend armor and weapon classes with this unit but settled on this configuration. i could tweak the weapon though.

Quote:

The Malk Content is absolutely crazy. Probably the most powerful being I've ever seen in Dominions 3. Looked and acted like a Great Horror, with possibly stronger abilities.
well again, he should be more of a legend than a real unit. if you keep him in your lands he will destroy those too.

Quote:

I got Rasputin showing up at my capitol: he had 6 Death, 8 Blood. Dear lord. At 50 Shattered Soul he actually had a streak of about 10 rounds in a row rampaging through my capitol... so he may be somewhat balanced, weird to say. He did come in handy to summon Wraith Lords later on... I got him near endgame.
thats the way i wanted the balance to be. on one hand the vampires are very powerful, on the other hand they truly are a twoedged sword. i once had rasputin at 70 shattered soul wich was ab bit too much. ;-)

Quote:

One Mad Prophet is usually enough to destroy almost any province of independents or SP enemy nation, with their ridiculous Blood Vengeance +4. If you are looking into balancing, I would not give them more than +2, and probably lower their Holy to 3.
ok thanks, i will try that.

Quote:

The Freaks I would only use later on for Blood Hunting, as their 20 Shattered Soul is less than any of the others, plus their relative cheapness of 200g is encouraging.
that is exactly why i balanced them as i did. ;-)

Quote:

The other 3 commanders, The Awakend (is this meant to be spelled this way?), the Crazed Monster, and the Raving Lunatic are pretty much throwaways... I never hired one and there is no reason I can think of that I would want to. (Unless a Scythe has an area effect attack?) Still. Maybe some alternate magical paths would be nice here.
yes "the awakend" is the name out of the malkavian book. he has a rather modest shattered soul and is a great commander for all kinds of troops. the crazed monster is a very good assassin even though he is unpredictable.
the crazed monster has a incredibly powerful shapechange abillity that transforms him into a true killing machine, but again he is unpredictable.

Quote:

Vohzd and Broodmothers... seem pretty much in line. Though at 30 and 60 bloodslaves, I'd just rather have Vampire Lords for 77 slaves. They totally have their use as tramplers though. The Swallow Whole ability... how is that supposed to work for Tramplers? It deals 2x to units smaller than it, but don't they just Trample those?
the swallow whole abillity was more for show. a thing like the vohzd should be able to swallow a small unit, shouldn´t he? ;-)

Quote:

Wraiths are very powerful. The Shivering Shiver gives you 4-5 of them for a mere 10 death gems, and they are Ethereal and Immortal with high Attack and 2x armor negating, paralyzing attacks. Still you have 0 commanders that can actually summon them without boosters. Kind of weird not having any vampires with over 2 Death. I did not find Cappadocians anywhere.
well, i can tweak them a bit. the malkavians might deal with the cappadocians but still they aren´t them and might have to study a bit to summon the wraiths.

Quote:

Big Bad Lupins are sooo powerful, WAY too powerful. For 20 astral gems at Conjuration 7 they can Summon Allies to get a Lupin. Lupins are how I won the game... they are extraordinarily powerful. Huge amounts of hps, huge ATK value, 3 attacks, 20 strength. Great protection, especially when berserking, large amounts of regneration, and even indy commanders can use them. Recuperation and Dark Power are just icing on the cake. Either the Lupin Mamas or the Lupins themselves need definite balancing. Trick Lupines summon at 15 astral for 4 units seems balanced. Lupin Mamas for 20 astral gems is easily the biggest giveaway in the mod. They should cost at least double, and that is being pretty generous.
the lupins are a problem no doubt. its just difficult to intergrate them without them loosing some of their advantage over the average vampire. in the vampire the masquerade world a lupin can take out a lot of vampires on his own. i once put their regeneration abillity down and they stared to die like flies.

Quote:

Fairy Beings at 6 astral and 6 flying movement are nice. But the fairies they autosummon do not seem to work... they always kill themselves with fairy dust and I don't think the Touch of Madness works. I set them to attack archers and they pretty much only ever killed themselves.
yes i know, i still have no real clue how to remedy that without making them completly useless.

Quote:

This mod is HUGE. And the Malkavians play very differently than most any other mod nation I've tried. Sometimes the Shattered Soul gets in the way, but Immortal, Regenerating, Fearing, Life Draining, Multiple Attack units more than makes up for it. Very, very fun and extremely well done module, with glaring balance issues. Thank you for all the work that went in to this!!! Hope you find this useful and interesting.
absolutly and i thank you for your review of my mod.

i will work on the balancing. ;-)

Quote:

Perhaps at 9 Blood you could Ritual Summon one of three or four Antediluvians, a 3rd Generation vampire, the direct descendant of Malkav. Maybe they could eat other vampires, even commanders as fuel?
i do not dare to put real antediluvians into the mod. the waking of even one of them would mean the start of gehenna if you remember. ;-)

and yes i have been thinking about putting some other vampire clans into mods, but i haven´t found the time.

avarchillion

Avarchillion January 5th, 2012 08:09 PM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
Quote:

Waking Dreamers. Oh my god. 2 gemsummons per turn, and the 3 most powerful magic paths. 21 base research... they are what powers this nation. If they were priced fairly, they'd be over 1000gp.
yea i have to admit, they are way too strong. the thing is, i put the gemsum in for testing and have already tweaked that. try version 1.2.3 there they ware more expansive 400 g and have "only" 18 research. ;-)

again, try the 1.2.3 version, some of the balancing issues are resolved, i hope.

though thanks to your well written review i will go through my mod again and try to rebalance things.

also again: i am german, live in germany and english is not my native language, so please send me all the spelling errors you find.

avarchillion

Avarchillion January 5th, 2012 09:29 PM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
1 Attachment(s)
here the newest version of my mod. version 1.3.1 makes these changes from 1.3:

---------------------------------------------------------------------

-- deformed plate mail
now 21 port

-- Ghoulsword
now len 3
now dmg 15

-- Faeriedust
now dmg 0
now #magic
now #nostr

-- Shivering Touch
now #magic not armornegating

----Familiar Crossbowman
now ap 13

----Ghoul Guardian
no reinvigoration any more

----Ghoul Assasin
no reinvigoration any more

----Fledgeling Malkavian
now 60 g price

----Neonate Malkavian
now berserk 2

----Wereform
now berserk 4
now coldres -25
now darkpower 2

----Tzimisce Broodmother
now berserk 2
now darkpower 1

----Tzimisce Vozhd
now berserk 1
now darkpower 1

----Tzimisce Szlachta
now berserk 1
now darkpower 1

----Lupin
now regeneration 20
now not ambidextrous
now berserk 2
now darkpower 1

----Faerie Sprite
now no illusion

----Zombu
now not ambidextrous

----Wraith
now not ambidextrous
now not immortal

----War Ghoul
now berserk 3

---- Crazed Monster
now not ambidextrous

----The Mad Prophet
now hp 17
now not ambidextrous
now darkpower 2
now bloodvengeance 1

----Mesmeric Manipulator
now darkpower 4
now berserk 1

----The Freak
now def 15
now bloodmagic 2
now darkpower 4
now berserk 4

----Waking Dreamer
now hp 15
now astralmagic 4
now nobadevents 10
now darkpower 1
now no illusion
now not ambidextrous

----The Awakend
now shatteredsoul 25

---- Ghoul Sheriff
now okundeadleader

---- Malkavian Elder
now darkpower 4
now berserk 4

---- Big Bad Lupin
now hp 40
now prec 10
now regeneration 30
now noleader
now darkpower 3
now fireres -100
no longer summon lupin (even though i might regret this) ;-)

---- Being from Faerieland
now astralmagic 4

-- The Dionysian
now darkpower 5
now awe 5
now astralmagic 6
now bloodmagic 4
now deathmagic 4

-- Rasputin
no longer "touch of madness"
now ambidextrous 2
now deathmagic 5
now berserk 4

-- Vasantasena
now hp 25
now prot 3
now bloodmagic 5
now astralmagic 2
now priestmagic 1
now berserk 3
now darkpower 5

---- Crazy Jane
now att 10
now no illusion

---- Malk Content
now no illusion
now darkpower 4
now berserk 2
now ambidextrous 2
now no bloodvengeance

----The Elder
now regeneration 25
now berserk 2
now darkpower 2
now fireres -75
now shockers -75

----The Ninja-Wannabe
now berserk 2
now darkpower 2

changed some spell descriptions
and the number of bloodslaves required for some of the commander summoning spells

also changed some spelling errors
---------------------------------------------------------------------

i hope that this one is a bit more balanced. ;-)

avarchillion

Soyweiser January 6th, 2012 10:32 AM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
Wow, this mod is indeed a bit overpowered. 6 gems + 10 slaves and 10% blood magic bonus. And that is ignoring all the rest. Loads of AN or AP attacks, a crossbow shooter that shoots once each turn etc.

Avarchillion January 6th, 2012 01:57 PM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
Quote:

Wow, this mod is indeed a bit overpowered. 6 gems + 10 slaves and 10% blood magic bonus. And that is ignoring all the rest. Loads of AN or AP attacks, a crossbow shooter that shoots once each turn etc.
well, the balancing is the shattered soul stat. your vampires are always ready to turn on you, destroy your temple, pillage your province and all that.

if you still find this mod too easy to play, try playing against abysia or a nation with strong priests. all the vampires are undead and have a -100% resistance to fire (so they easily go up in flames).

avarchillion

Avarchillion January 6th, 2012 02:08 PM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
1 Attachment(s)
ok, another update:

-------------------------
----Familiar Lancerider
has become cheaper :-)

----Familiar Swordsman
has also become cheaper

----Malkavian Thrall
also a bit cheaper
now mindless
now att 8
now def 7
now str 8

----The Mad Prophet
now def 5
now fireres -100
now shockers -100
now no fear
now no darkpower
now regeneration 20
now awe 1

----Mesmeric Manipulator
now regeneration 20
now awe 2
now holy again
now hp 15

----The Freak
now def 13
now no incurunrest
now regeneration 20

----Waking Dreamer
now no death gems

---- Big Bad Lupin
can summon lupins again
now regeneration 25
now fear 3

----The Awakened
now regeneration 20
changed the name….
now priestskill 1
now def 15

---- Malkavian Elder
now regeneration 25
now awe 1

---- Being from Faerieland
now awe 2

-- The Dionysian
now awe 3
now hp 20

-- Rasputin
now fear 5

-- Vasantasena
now fear 1
now awe 1
now fireres -100
now shockers -100
now not ambidextrous

---- Crazy Jane
now shockers -100

---- Malk Content
now stealthy 20

-- Trick Lupines
now 20 gems

-- Trick Lupin Mama
now 60 gems

-- Something out of Faerieland
now 30 gems

-------------------------------------------------

avarchillion

Soyweiser January 6th, 2012 02:18 PM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
One small thing, I personally dislike summons that have a hidden gold cost.

Apart from that, I think you can win with only 2 provinces, one cap, and the other to dump all the unrest creating temple burning commanders in another province. Fort that one up. Get gold from events, and gather all the gems and slaves produced by the commanders :D.

The freaks expand perfectly fine. Immortal, and berserk. Ideal to destroy anything that comes into your lands.

Soyweiser January 6th, 2012 04:06 PM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
Bug: the wereform of the lunatic has only 100 years of max age. And isn't immortal, and is suddenly mindless. Might want to exualize all the different abilities it has.

Avarchillion January 6th, 2012 04:23 PM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
Quote:

Bug: the wereform of the lunatic has only 100 years of max age. And isn't immortal, and is suddenly mindless. Might want to exualize all the different abilities it has.
thanks i´m going to look into that.

you seem to know a lot about modding. that is good to know as i do have some questions.
1. i am trying to get the fairydust weapon to work, but it just doesn´t....
example:

-- Faeriedust

#newweapon 668
#name "Faeriedust"
#dmg 1
#att 5
#def 0
#nratt 1
#rcost 1
#aoe 1
#magic
#nostr
#len 4
#secondaryeffect 88
#secondaryeffectalways 387
#explspr 10001
#end

that should create a close combat weapon that is considered magic, should, on hit, cause unconsciousness and should induce sleep to anyone in the area. well, it doesn´t do anything but a little bit of damage.......
what have i done wrong here?

2. how do i give unique, definit names to my heroes?

3. why is the space for text (unit description etc.) always so small?

4. how do i get the wereform only to come out when the raving lunatic is actually hit? that was my original idea and i am not happy with how it works at the moment.

Quote:

One small thing, I personally dislike summons that have a hidden gold cost.
hm, summons that cost money. i never noticed that. which once have that hidden cost and how do i remedy that?

anyhow thanks for the critisism. :-)

avarchillion

Avarchillion January 6th, 2012 04:29 PM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
well, i have made the wereform less mindless, immortal and more youthful. :-)

just download the 1.3.2 version at the begining of this post.

avarchillion

kianduatha January 7th, 2012 12:19 AM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
Your fairy dust weapon is way too complex for what you want it to do...you could just plain have this:

#newweapon 668
#name "Faeriedust"
#dmg 110
#att 5
#def 0
#nratt 1
#rcost 1
#aoe 1
#magic
#dt_stun
#nostr
#len 4
#secondaryeffectalways 387
#explspr 10001
#end

However, that's the most ridiculously overpowered weapon in the world--fatigue out aoe-1 automatically? Nothing should get that.

Avarchillion January 7th, 2012 12:36 PM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
Quote:

However, that's the most ridiculously overpowered weapon in the world--fatigue out aoe-1 automatically? Nothing should get that.
well, it was more of a try to get something noticeable to work. in the game i would definitivly tweak that. ;-)

avarchillion

Soyweiser January 7th, 2012 04:45 PM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
Hidden gold cost is because the summons are normal units that still have gold upkeep costs (As they are the same units as the normal recruits they still increase your upkeep by their normal gold cost). (Not that bad in this case, as the rest is a bit op).

Renojustin January 8th, 2012 05:38 PM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
I will try your new version since the first one was so enjoyable... I hope they are less god-like this time around! I have been using them as one of my overpowered opponents in SP. The others are mostly by Amos, to give you an idea of how strong yours is!

Avarchillion January 9th, 2012 07:10 AM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
1 Attachment(s)
ok another update: version 1.4

i have tweaked all the vampires, took away some of their weapons, tweaked the lupins and managed to get some of the weapons (faeriedust; thanks to kianduatha; and others to work).

rather substantial tweak and balancing update.

for instance i managed to get malk content killed in game against some independent defenders. :-)

avarchillion

Renojustin January 16th, 2012 04:40 AM

Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
 
I played a game of 1.3.2 and the vast sweep of vampire abilities and powers downward seemed like it was so much more balanced.

-The Horsemen don't (didn't) have any Ambidexterity so their effective Attack with the two long range weapons is very low.

I forgot the rest, it was a few days ago but I will update here as I remember, playing v. 1.4.


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